


Girl, Interrupted

by that_runneth



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Short One Shot, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_runneth/pseuds/that_runneth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by this piece of art: http://fiaselle.tumblr.com/post/61138842615/sam-i-dont-belong-here</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl, Interrupted

  “Ashes to ashes.”

 

_The awakening. The morning tea and the sunlight, coming through the window shutters, along with the sounds of the garden. Nothing of the darkness and relative silence of her old home, every sunrise found Quorra outside at the porch, with eyes wide shut, staring at the ascending globe of light. She would stand there in the growing blaze, overlooking the city, until the time to start the day would come._

 

  “Dust to dust.”

 

_The awakening. A thousand cycles of preparation had filled Quorra with great expectations; and had made her ready for the upcoming life under the sun – or almost so. The pain was not a surprise – the first sunburn, a kitchen knife slipping and cutting her hand lightly –, but it was the frustration, the purposelessness._

 

  The people around the casket moved; the ceremony ended. Suddenly Sam felt all the eyes on himself, all the tearless faces, for the devastating loss, the young life cut half, as the conducting cleric had said not long before, had been a stranger for them. Even the couple on the other side of the grave, that knew or suspected the most and now looked saddened, even they were rather worried for him, Sam. He felt Lora’s intent eyes on himself. Did they expect a speech from him, a vocal farewell? He stepped ahead and placed the white rose which he had been holding, on the casket. The only words on his mind were not meant to anybody: that somebody that had not come from dust, was not supposed to return to dust – that things were never meant to happen this way.

 

  He turned around and began to walk toward the wrought iron gate of the cemetery.

 

 

 

 

  She was standing under the yellow light of the street lamps, leant to the cold metal of the lamp-post. Her own voice was raspy, alien in the cold night air.

 

  “What’s next, Sam?” she asked; a question that she would ask again and again in the following weeks, happily and full of expectation first and with a resigned tone later. Sam Flynn turned at her; still shaken from the loss, but with a new determination on his face he smiled.

 

  “I guess we’re supposed to change the world,” he said. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

 

  The wind was freezing against Quorra’s face as the bike was rolling on the empty streets. Soon there was the smell of a forest and then the sky began to fade above the green foliage. They crossed a bridge above the river and the city on the bank was mighty, living in the morning light. Suddenly she turned and faced the sunrise for the first time ever and she was blinded by that golden light. Quorra closed her eyes which were full of tears, from the cold wind, from the sunlight, from the mixture of intense happiness and pain.

 

 

 

 

  Quorra discovered the world the way a child would have experienced it: seeing the obvious first, and noticing the cracks and flaws later. And it was beautiful: she would climb up on mountain trails or stairs, leading to the top of a historic building, to see the world from above. She would be overwhelmed by the scents in a garden and would eat too much at a simple burger joint, just to start over the next day.

 

  Soon there came the realization; there would be people living in camps just blocks away from the great buildings, people that did not even reach out for help anymore. Smoke would cover the sky and hide that precious light and make it hard to breathe – trash would pile up on the street. People with curable diseases would suffer and die young for they could not afford treatment. Quorra was astonished; she must have missed something, she felt – how could people go on with their lives and not being numbed by seeing such misery? She figured the answer quickly: they lived their own lives. But she did not have a life to focus on nor the ability to turn her face away.

 

  But then – had not she come to help? Had not been she sent to change the world? The idea was comforting; she just had to find out what her power was. Quorra was unsure; back in the Grid their escape had been only a fading hope and Flynn had not told her about his plans, if he had had any. Apparently, her mere touch did not cure illness and she did not know the answer to any of the big questions of the world. She did not have any outstanding knowledge of computers; she felt rather disturbed by them. Quorra was confused. During her time with Kevin Flynn she had been constantly reassured about her special nature, about the wisdom and extraordinary status of the ISOs. Now she remembered: and she also remembered other words: flaw, deviation. Quorra pressed her palms against her own ears to shut out those old words in a renewed fear that Clu, the archenemy of her kind might have been right.

 

  That could not be true: she was going to find out the reason why she had been sent. And suddenly Quorra thought she knew: had not she forgotten the most obvious? While she was discovering the world for herself, she forgot about the person that had brought her here, she forgot about Sam. Now Quorra rushed to see after him. Not like they did not meet every day, not that there were no exchanged words until then, but her mind was rather on the new impressions, on the countless things she had to learn.

 

  “How was the day?” she asked with a wide smile when they sat down for a dinner. Sam looked at her surprisedly. Just then Quorra noticed the exhausted look on his face; just then she realized that she had not seen him smiling since her first day in the real world.

 

  “Fine, thanks,” Sam replied, but his tone revealed that nothing was fine, not really. It took her a while, she had to keep on asking questions, to learn that everything was very far from being fine – that the executive board of ENCOM was not happy to see the changes, introduced by Sam. That they did everything to derail his efforts… that his attempts to recover the Grid were unsuccessful.

 

  “Is it gone?” she asked after long moments, after she finally understood what that meant. “Are they all gone?”

 

  That, that hurt. Quorra was somewhat prepared to hear that Kevin Flynn had not survived the reintegration with his clone, but to learn that they were all dead… That idea made her heart ache. That meant that millions had died so the two of them could live. Knowing that added to the frustration: all those lives could not be lost for nothing.

 

  Quorra looked at Sam, at the grief-stricken expression. She could fix that, she thought and rushed there for a comforting embrace. It worked, she felt that as the strained muscles began to relax under her touch – and Quorra believed that she knew, that she finally figured what she was supposed to do. She pressed her lips against Sam’s lightly, closing her eyes – just to see him frozen and dumbfounded when she finally looked up. There, Quorra thought, as she was running upstairs toward her room, with burning face, she had been wrong again.

 

 

 

 

  Time. She had time… they had time, they agreed about that. He was busy with his work, with issues that Quorra could not provide any help with. Contrary to his calming words after the awkward scene their relationship grew tense, with embarrassed looks and silence. She was not supposed to be touched, Quorra thought: she was the miracle. She shred angry tears at the idea and went out alone to prove it otherwise. There she ended up with sweaty hands all over her, with disgust and outrage clouding her mind and when she punched the aggressor in the face and finally got away, she was angrier and more devastated than before.

 

  They had money she could use for charity and Quorra did that for a while. And it worked and it helped the lives of the people in need – some of them. It was a tiny piece and by then Quorra knew that if there was ever a point in her existence, that was not to give the fish to people, but to teach them to catch a fish.

 

  “But how,” she whispered to herself in tears. “How…”

 

  Slowly she retracted. She found it interesting to learn more about her family… If the Flynns were her family at all. Quorra was introduced to the living relatives, to the friends – and she felt equally honored and hurt by meeting Lora Baines and Alan Bradley. The stories she had heard about them! But she could not be honest with them, she could not tell them what she dearly wanted to. She read through old articles and watched video tapes, starting from the beginning and getting to the present day in an orderly fashion. As the days passed and Quorra learnt more and more about them, about the great journey throughout the decades – throughout the centuries – she felt that this knowledge would help her discover her own designation. She felt like writing, writing a book, to add to Flynn’s memory, to let the world know more about him. But the pen fell out from her hand when she sat down to write and she ended up at the window, staring at the strange, foreign universe. Then, months after her arrival through the portal, she voiced the words that had been on her lips since the beginning.

 

  “I don’t belong here,” she whispered. If she could just return to her own world, it would worth it, even with the fight and hiding. But the old world was lost, with all the enemies, friends and legends. The legends… The ones that became disposable, that were deleted after the reintegration – so that Quorra and Sam could live. All the love and hate and friendships erased, truly forgotten, for there was nobody to tell their stories anymore. And Quorra felt tired and lightheaded at the same time, at the sense of loss, at the sensation of incompleteness.

 

  She liked the videos of Sam’s pranks at ENCOM, especially the last one. It was really amusing for her, to an extent that she wanted to see the place with her own eyes. It was on a Saturday afternoon when she went there, after she had said goodbye to Sam, who traveled out of town for a business meeting. The building was deserted when Quorra entered. She took the elevator to the top level. She smiled when the door opened: the roof was the same as it had been on the recording. There was bright sunlight and the wind was blowing. Quorra walked to the crane and climbed up. Carefully she walked to the spot where Sam had been standing before the jump. She looked down at the street: the pavement was far below and the walkway was almost empty at this hour. She would not hurt anybody, at least with this very last action of hers.

 

  The sun was shining brightly above as the light of the portal had been glowing once. Quorra smiled and reached out at it with both hands. She was blinded by the powerful blaze: she imagined that there was a disc in her hand that began to ascend. There was a gust of wind and her heels slipped – the feeling of weightlessness was the same what she had felt when the transmission had started. She opened her eyes, just to be overwhelmed by the sunlight once more and Quorra smiled, because the Grid was not lost, for all the friends, all the old love and feud was still there, still alive.

 

  And then she was home.

 


End file.
